Carbon tax comeback

Yesterday I mentioned that there’s opposition and even threats of strikes in protest against the carbon tax, suggesting that Labor’s love-in with the Greens – who’ve had a fluky election result give them the balance of power in parliament and who I feel have probably pushed Gingery Dullard to go back on her pre-election promise not to do introduce the kind of tax she introduced yesterday – is going to cost them. Of course if the ALP have anything to do with things it’s going to cost the Greens instead.

AN influential Labor strategist has called for the major parties to starve the Greens of preferences in a One Nation-style pincer movement designed to kill the party.Former Victorian ALP secretary Stephen Newnham predicted the ALP and the Coalition would soon swap preferences to isolate the Greens federally and at a state level.[…]Mr Newnham, a prominent figure in right-wing Labor politics, is considered one of the leading forces in the ALP for having predicted the rising threat of the Greens and the need to expose their policies. Between 2005 and 2009, he ran the Victorian ALP and was one of several figures who stressed that the Greens could become a major threat, particularly in key inner-city streets.Mr Newnham said the Victorian Liberal Party’s decision to preference against the Greens at the last state election in key seats would herald the beginning of the end of the major parties preferencing the Greens.[…]“The last (Victorian) election was potentially the greatest strategic disaster for the Greens in this country,” he said.“And the reason it was such a disaster was, for the first time, a major party preferenced them last and won a narrow election, arguably on the back of doing it.”

And I’d be right behind that, and even voting for it, except for two little problems. I don’t think it speaks well of an electoral system if the biggest fish in the pond can get together and manipulate it with the intention of destroying a smaller opposing party, and, somewhat hypocritically, I’m not really much keener on the ALP or the Liberals either and wouldn’t shed a tear if it was done to both of them.

Still, it’s probably the Green tail wagging the ALP dog that we’ve got to thank for Jules going back on her promise not to introduce the kind of tax she introduced yesterday, so fuck ’em.